This May 1970 issue of PEL (Panorama Económico Latinoamericano) addresses Cuba's relationship with the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD), analyzing tensions between revolutionary development models and international development frameworks. The cover employs striking photomontage combining historical imagery—an ox-drawn cart with agricultural workers rendered in decorative black-and-white engraving style—with circular photographs of modern industrial infrastructure inserted into interlocking gear shapes in vibrant pink and green. This visual metaphor dramatizes the transition from pre-revolutionary agricultural underdevelopment to mechanized socialist industrialization, with the gear motif suggesting coordinated planning and technological progress as the engine of development.
Published by Prensa Latina under director M. Fernández Colino, PEL served as Cuba's primary vehicle for disseminating economic analysis across Latin America during a crucial period of Third World development debates. The UNDP represented international development orthodoxy that Cuba increasingly challenged through its advocacy for self-reliant socialist development and South-South cooperation. This issue appeared during the United Nations' Second Development Decade, as Cuba promoted alternative models that rejected dependency on Western capital and technical assistance. The magazine's sophisticated graphic design—juxtaposing pastoral pre-industrial scenes with modernist photomontage—visualized core debates about whether authentic development required breaking with capitalist modernization paradigms, positioning Cuba's revolutionary experience as a viable alternative path for the Global South.